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Outcomes from Discovery

Once you complete your research, you'll be able to analyse your findings to gain insights.

In the Discovery phase you should:

understand the problem you’re trying to solve for the user
understand the touchpoints along the user journey, often expressed as a journey map, service map, mental model or alignment diagram
create a clear set of needs and develop task models for different types of users
understand the gaps, limitations and barriers for the user
understand the opportunities for further research
document user groups descriptions and characteristics that are significant for the service, often expressed as user profiles or personas combined with actual stories from user.

Complete Discovery research

You’ll have done enough research when you understand:

who uses your service
what users needs from your service
how people with support and access needs interact with your service.

Discovery research doesn't just happen in the Discovery phase. Ongoing research helps teams to understand the evolving needs of their service.

User research in Alpha

In the Alpha stage, try lots of different approaches to meet user needs and find out which approach works best.

The Alpha stage will help you reduce risks, including:

design risks, making sure you have the right scope for the service
business processes, finding out if government can build the service
technical capability, making sure you can integrate the service and make it secure.

The Alpha stage is important, so make sure you have budget for it.

Work out what works, not what's popular

Be prepared to park any ideas that do not meet user needs. You may find different elements of an idea work. Take what is working and combine it with other ideas. Remember to document what you’ve tested so you can refer to it later. This helps the team remember what’s been tested and what hasn’t.

Do task-based testing so you can understand which version is most effective. Remember we care about what works, not the preferences people have.

You’ll know something works when people find it easy to complete a task. They will understand what they are doing and won't make mistakes.

Keep interviewing, iterating and testing

Once you have a prototype, even if it’s a paper one, you can start to test it with users. 

You can see if your ideas will meet user needs and find out if the prototype is usable. You can use this insight to iterate your design and test again with users.

Combine prototypes tests with user research interviews. This will help you to deepen your understanding of user needs.

Park any ideas and prototypes if they don't meet user needs.

User research in Beta stage

In the Beta stage, you’ll learn ways to improve your service. Including different kinds of experiences users may have, including usability and accessibility issues.

There are 2 different research stages in Beta:

Researching as you build the beta service.
Researching with users of a working beta service.

Private Beta research

As you build out your Beta service, you'll continue to do task-based usability testing with a range of users. This time, you are aiming to refine a solution for launch.

When you do the task-based usability testing:

decide on a hypothesis, this is how you think the design will meet a user need
use a structured approach to evaluate, this will make it clear what work needs to be done
test with people who have different needs.

You will commission an accessibility review before you put the service into a working Beta.

Public Beta research

In Public Beta you will continue with your research and explore the information and data you gained from your public users.

In this stage you will conduct interviews and feedback from users and front line staff and do user shadowing.

You will also

create 2 versions of the service to see which performs better, this is called A/B testing
collect analytics and key performance indicators
do audits including usability and accessibility tests
collect operational data to measure service performance, such as customer service insights
do follow-up interviews to collect detailed feedback from service users.

User research in Live stage

In the Live stage you will test and collect feedback to make sure your service meets user needs. These research activities will build your understanding of common issues to help you improve the service.

You can learn more about user needs through:

web analytics and operational data
surveys or follow-up interviews
face-to-face and remote usability tests
A/B testing on new and changed features.

The frequency and depth of the research you do in Live depends on what you are trying to find out. For example, you should start the Discovery process again before adding a new component to your service.

If you are going to decommission your service, find out how people use it first. This will help you understand the gap that will be created when the service is gone.

Design 1

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If your team is experienced and you’re doing research in a lab, they may be able to capture observations and statements on sticky notes during the session itself.

Sort observations

When you’re ready, ask your team to place their observations on a wall or virtual canvas. As a group you will work to sort your observations into similar themes.

The idea is to look for patterns or clusters in the data by grouping the information until clear themes emerge. You can group by:

common topics, for example identity, delivery, payment
stages in a user journey, for example ‘supply photo’, ‘attend interview’, ‘pay’
individual pages or steps in a transaction
types of users, for example, first time user, business user.

In some cases, notes may be relevant to more than 1 cluster. You should allow people to move or duplicate notes placed by others. This is called ‘affinity mapping’.

Name your groups

Once you’ve sorted your observations, agree on a title that represents the cluster. From there, you can break large groups into smaller themes by matching observations.

For example, if users need to supply a photo to use your service, you might have a ‘photos’ group that could broken down into:

photo rules and requirements
using a photo booth or store photographer
taking a photo at home
reasons a photo might be rejected.

Determine findings

The final part of the analysis is determining what the observations mean. When you agree on what you’ve learned, write it as a finding or insight and add it to the relevant group on your affinity map. Write findings as short statements that summarise what you’ve learned, for example:

‘the legal declaration is threatening and difficult to understand’
‘people think they can click the progress bar to navigate’
‘users are confused about what they need to do because so many questions are optional’.

Confirm the actions

Use your findings to make decisions about what to work on or change. This supports the agile method of continuous planning with new facts or requirements. As a group, discuss if there are any actions you want to take. Write these on sticky notes in another colour. Add them to the relevant group on your affinity map.

Actions might include:

new design ideas to work on
new questions to include in user research
things you want to change in a prototype and test in another research session
new user stories to add to the product backlog
new details you need to add to an existing story
strategic insights you can use to develop your user needs, proposition or product roadmap.

Share your findings

Collate your findings so you can share them with the wider team and stakeholders. This is sometimes called a shareback.

You can share insights in different ways. If you've been testing prototypes you might show printouts with comments on sticky notes. If you've only just started, you might read out quotes and observations.

Use an electronic presentation to share your findings or whatever medium suits your team.

Your participant may decide on arrival that they don't want to be recorded. You can still conduct the research. Check with the participant if it's okay to take notes by hand.

Using a consent form in an interview

You should start interviews with users by explaining the purpose of the research. Show participants the consent form.

Explain that they have a choice about what they wish to consent to. Get permission before starting any form of recording, audio, visual or written.

Sometimes a participant may say something that they don’t feel comfortable sharing. After the interview, ask them again if they are happy for the conversation to be used as part of the research. Make sure they still consent to you using the information.

Leave a copy with the participant

Leave a copy of the consent form with the participant at the end of the session. This gives them a record of what they have agreed to. It also lets them know how they can withdraw consent if they want to later.

A good way to do this is to take a photograph of the form (such as a photograph) and leave the original with the participant.